The Scranton Sewer Authority has reached a proposed settlement with the federal and state governments to undertake $140 million in upgrades over 25 years to prevent pollution of the Lackawanna River and its tributaries from sewer overflows, and to pay a $340,000 fine for such pollution.

The settlement, announced Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency, represents a marked decrease from an initial EPA-mandated plan in 2006 that had called for $200 million in upgrades over 12 years, authority Executive Director Gene Barrett said.

The result of the settlement is that the authority would have to spend $60 million less in upgrades and would have twice as many years to implement the improvements, he said.

"It's a greater relief to ratepayers. So we're very pleased with that part of the settlement," Mr. Barrett said.

The settlement stems from a 2009 lawsuit by the EPA against the authority that claimed the authority illegally discharged more than 1 billion gallons of untreated sewage into the Lackawanna River in 2008 in "combined sewer overflows."

The proposed settlement, which was filed in federal court Thursday in Scranton, involves short- and long-term initiatives mandated by the federal government as part of a multistate effort to reduce nutrient discharge into waterways that feed the polluted Chesapeake Bay.

The authority's 25-million-gallons-per-day wastewater treatment plant serves some 87,000 people in Scranton and Dunmore. Its 275 miles of sewer lines in a 10,000-acre service area flow into a treatment plant that discharges effluent into the Lackawanna River, a feeder of the Susquehanna River, which flows into Chesapeake Bay.

The settlement addresses problems with the authority's combined sewer system, which, when overwhelmed by stormwater, frequently discharges raw sewage, industrial waste, nitrogen, phosphorus and polluted water into the Lackawanna River and its tributaries. The volume of combined sewage that overflows from the system is about 700 million gallons annually, the EPA said in a statement.

"This settlement achieves a long-term solution to reduce millions of gallons of contaminated stormwater overflows into the Lackawanna River," said Ignacia Moreno, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division.

EPA Regional Administrator Shawn Garvin added, "Achieving this settlement puts another municipality on a more sustainable path for managing stormwater in ways that benefit the health and quality of its communities and local waters for years to come."

The $340,000 fine, which would be split evenly between the federal and state governments, also already has been offset by a prior settlement in a related litigation, Mr. Barrett said. In that case, the authority sued a consulting engineering firm that wrote the 2006 plan; the firm paid $380,000 to the authority to settle the lawsuit, he said.

The state Department of Environmental Protection, which partnered with the EPA in the complaint and settlement, said it will work with the federal agency and the sewer authority to implement changes outlined in the agreement.

"This agreement, if approved by the courts, will begin the process of making sure the Lackawanna River and the streams connected to it are healthier and cleaner for the thousands of people who use them for recreational use and to obtain water," DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly said.

In addition to the 25-year control plan, the proposed settlement requires the installation of a state-of-the-art biological treatment system at the SSA wastewater treatment plant to reduce discharges of nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, the EPA said.

The proposed pact is subject to a 30-day public comment period and court approval after it is published in the Federal Register.

Staff writer LAURA LEGERE contributed to this report.

Contact the writer: jlockwood@timesshamrock.com

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